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Non-Tech : The New Iomega '2000' Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (750)	6/17/1999 11:11:00 PM
From: Rocky Reid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5023

>>You can criticize David Gardner, but you can't say that he won't own up to a mistake.<< But you can't trust him to follow up on his own advice. You see, David Gardner and the Motley Fool recommend in their books they sell not to invest in stocks under $5. If they adhered to their own rules, they should have sold out of IOM about 9 months ago. I agree with Iomeganut over at Motley Fool that David Gardner and the Motely Fool publishes one set of rules but practices another set of rules in real life.

To: Cogito who wrote (750)	6/17/1999 11:29:00 PM
From: FuzzFace	Respond to of 5023

Allen, I hear you. I wish my IOM position were smaller than it is, but it's not really very much %-wise in my portfolio any more. Anyway, here is a MF post that includes some hypothetical reasons for hope. Post 22412: I neither blame nor praise David Gardner for stating the obvious: this has been a crappy stock pick, a real dog, for the first half of 1999. On a separate thread I posted the question, what was our clue? What were the signs in December 1998 to early January 1999 that Iomega was in trouble? In a private e-mail response, a poster has suggested that we could have examined ROK (Rockwell), Glore's former company, which on a cursory glance at the chart did not perform exceptionally well over the three-year period of Nov. 1995 to Nov. 1998. In fact, it spent most of 1998 falling. Yes, I know that the summer of 1998 was unkind to the stock market in general, not just to ROK. I also would acknowledge that the systems Glore put in place probably contributed to the excellent performance of ROK in the last seven months. But Glore's three years at Rockwell did not make his shareholders rich, and I don't have three years to wait for Glore to leave and the stock to skyrocket. IOM is going to have to skyrocket on his watch. Will it? After the Jan. 21st conference call there were lots warning signs for those who would see them, but what were the warning signs before Jan. 21st? As for after Jan. 21st, like many on this board I refused to take my medicine and sell at a loss, choosing instead to watch the bad news multiply for Iomega and my losses multiply along with them. Why did I hold through this period, adding to my position on the way down? Many reasons. I believed there was a finite supply of bad news and that the company would battle bad news with a series of success stories about design wins (I was wrong). I believed that the company would aggressively maximize its marketing opportunities (I was wrong). I believed that the company would aggressively attack the LS-120 Superdisk market (I was wrong). I believed that the company would release a cheap successor to Jaz (I was wrong). I believed that Iomega's excellent progress on cost reduction would lead to positive earnings (I was wrong, at least for the first quarter, and we'll have to wait and see about 2Q99). I believed that the Agfa camera would be here by now (I was wrong). I believed that the Agfa camera would be the catalyst for many other digicam announcements (zero, I repeat zero, digicam announcements to date, and this is June 1999). I believed Jodie Glore when he gave firm guidance of a major, exciting Record/Play announcement within one to two months of the Jan. 21st conference call (I was very wrong). I believed Jodie Glore regarding the promise to announce the 2Q99 charge for personnel and facilities cuts, made on April 15th in the conference call: " . . . we will announce the specifics of this charge and resulting savings later this quarter" (the quarter's not over, so Glore's word may still be good on this one). It would be very easy to sell now. The stock is a dog, and I like my real dog a lot better than Iomega. However, let's say, just hypothetically, that Iomega is on the brink of a major increase in the share price; what will we look back on as the key clues that a leap was coming? Suggestions: - S. Bateh's incessant comments on SI's board about the sales success of the (higher margin) Zip250 disks and drives. - w7's "fait accompli" comment about a second source for Zip media. Having a second source also frees Iomega to pursue two possible fates, neither of which would have been welcomed by Fuji: a stronger alliance with Kodak or an acquisition by Sony. - The imminent June 30th deadline for releasing the specs on a hardware standard for media players (I forget the acronym of the association but it's something like SMDI), which could be the dam that is holding back announcements of Clik-based or Zip-based media players. - (wacky possibility) John Dvorak's Olympus-Kodak "I hope they tie at the finish line. A photo finish. Click." comment turns out to be a thinly veiled hint that these major digicam manufacturers were poised to introduce Clik-based cameras (PC Mag, June 8, 1999, page 87). - The Mike Joseph and John Morin promise in a RadioWallStreet interview to advertise and market worldwide for both the Clik drive and the IomegaDirect site (see post 21962). - The information that money-losers have been cut from the team. Jaz is going, Ditto is gone. If the money losers have been cut, and Zip is profitable, then Iomega is profitable, no? - The glimmerings of a strategy regarding optical storage, although "strategy" is probably too strong a word just yet. But something is coming at the June 21st press conference. The year is not yet over, but I'm tired of owning this dog. The problem is that I continue to see opportunities for profitable growth in Iomega's future, which keeps me from selling now at a loss. Comments welcomed. Long, Vin